Scoping review on interventions to improve adherence to reporting guidelines in health research

Objectives The goal of this study is to identify, analyse and classify interventions to improve adherence to reporting guidelines in order to obtain a wide picture of how the problem of enhancing the completeness of reporting of biomedical literature has been tackled so far.Design Scoping review.Sea...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Doug Altman, David Moher, David Blanco, Isabelle Boutron, Jamie J Kirkham, Erik Cobo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMJ Publishing Group 2019-05-01
Series:BMJ Open
Online Access:https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/5/e026589.full
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Objectives The goal of this study is to identify, analyse and classify interventions to improve adherence to reporting guidelines in order to obtain a wide picture of how the problem of enhancing the completeness of reporting of biomedical literature has been tackled so far.Design Scoping review.Search strategy We searched the MEDLINE, EMBASE and Cochrane Library databases and conducted a grey literature search for (1) studies evaluating interventions to improve adherence to reporting guidelines in health research and (2) other types of references describing interventions that have been performed or suggested but never evaluated. The characteristics and effect of the evaluated interventions were analysed. Moreover, we explored the rationale of the interventions identified and determined the existing gaps in research on the evaluation of interventions to improve adherence to reporting guidelines.Results 109 references containing 31 interventions (11 evaluated) were included. These were grouped into five categories: (1) training on the use of reporting guidelines, (2) improving understanding, (3) encouraging adherence, (4) checking adherence and providing feedback, and (5) involvement of experts. Additionally, we identified lack of evaluated interventions (1) on training on the use of reporting guidelines and improving their understanding, (2) at early stages of research and (3) after the final acceptance of the manuscript.Conclusions This scoping review identified a wide range of strategies to improve adherence to reporting guidelines that can be taken by different stakeholders. Additional research is needed to assess the effectiveness of many of these interventions.
ISSN:2044-6055